Friday, February 13, 2004
Music software advice and a little contest
Peace, all.
I went to a demonstration of the Sibelius3 software at a workshop last weekend. I was impressed. My current software of choice is concertware, which has many annoying quirks I've learned to work around in the past eight years.
They passed out demonstration cd's of Sibelius3, which was even more impressive when it ran on my office computer (though the narration sounded very much like Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap). It also makes my old printouts look like the stone age. I can scan hundreds of old files on ConcertWare into the new program, clean up the glitches, and do some serious arranging for instruments and voices. Then I realized that I could seriously upgrade my web site, add music (sights and sounds) and even get into some serious long-range collaboration. So last night I unshelved my old musical for the first time in months and started dreaming again of completion, rehearsals, and a nice little pit band playing for a cast of twenty-something. I need more work on the humorous songs, and the group numbers, for sure. The finale needs another jolt of energy (Nigel, turn it up to eleven, will you please?) to really raise the roof. And I need to decide once for all if the duet in the middle of act 1 can actually be composed and staged as I had first thought in 1999: two distinct simultaneous songs prayed by an older man and a young woman separated by hundreds of miles. That might get me past the hump. Depending on how picky I want to be I still need about six to ten more songs to bring this puppy to a choreographer and director.
Anyway, I thought this new software would really get my creative juices going. Loyal readers could hear songs in progress. Any opinion on this software? Any thoughts on what this musical might be? Four tickets to opening night for the first correct guess ...
Now off to the piano.
